


Colour Theory

by Starry_Dragon



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Gen, Reminiscing, Tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 19:56:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14172294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starry_Dragon/pseuds/Starry_Dragon
Summary: Little tiny fic that I just wrote because... I wanted to? It's not very long, only about 500 words, but I like how it turned out.When his "dear Doctor" is over for tea, a strange custom they do only sporadically, Garak finds himself reminiscing about the smallest things. Colour is such a strange thing -- it can stir up thoughts, memories of things long past and things in the present and maybe -- if one is lucky -- thinking of the future.Has some subtle G/B hints but not enough that I'd warrant a relationship tag (other than friendship) -- it certainly could be read that way but it also certainly could not, so really just sorta take it the way you want, if G/B isn't your cup of tea. (Pun very much intended.)





	Colour Theory

"How do you take your tea?"

It was, perhaps, a strange opening statement; _welcome to my humble abode_ — or something of the sort — was less direct. More akin to the typical Cardassian way of talking around things. Postponing them. Wrapping a hard grain of truth in the soft blankets of lies and courtesies.

He had started boiling the water for the tea twenty or so minutes before — time was pointless in this blazing cold place — and so all he had to do was invite his friend in, use rare, plain, simple language to ask about a plain and simple thing.

The visitor was wearing a red scarf.

It was the colour of the red leaf tea; the hot fire of mammalian blood, of autumn leaves on the Human homeworld. All of these. And yet, none of them.

"Sugar, please."

Sugar. Before his exile, he had never really seen anything as white and sparkling as sugar. On his homeworld, everything was the colour of sand and green succulents and violet flowers and of course the ones with the little green middles, that grew all over his garden.

_His garden._

As he put a small spoonful of sugar into the tea, his mind wandered over the hills and into the little rooftop garden he had once called his own. How he had loved that garden. His pride and joy. Blue eyes gazed sightlessly. They only saw the verdant foliage in the daydreamer's mind.

The owner of the red leaf tea, the little spoon with which he stirred it, and the couple of rooms on this sterile, too-cold, too-bright station, had worked so hard on that little garden. He wondered if anyone had cared for it, after he left. _After he was forced to leave,_ he reminded himself. No use mincing words. Not now.

He picked the tea set up, walked over to his small table. Put it down. Tried to ignore the light reflecting off of everything around him, the tea included.

He put honey in his tea. The sugar was _too_ white, _too_ stark. Cardassia had been full of brown and green and of course the grey; greys which took new life, blue or amber or green or lavender or any combination thereof, under the Cardassian sun, but under the station lighting looked dull and flat.

_One-dimensional_. Like one of the villains in his companion's fairly ridiculous spy caricatures.

And as he lifted the cup to his lips, he saw the smile of his companion — white teeth and smooth Human skin — and thought once more about that red scarf and that white sugar the colour of the visitor's teeth and the long-dead green garden he had left long ago as well as the greys that came alive once, elsewhere, but not here.

"Thank you for inviting me to tea, it was lovely."

He paused. Looked at the red scarf and the brown skin beneath. The brown — subtly green — eyes, like the flowers that covered his home's walls, climbing vines of flora. The sugar-white teeth. "No, I should be thanking you, my dear." _It's very strange, but you remind me of home._

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic for DS9 not only on AO3 but in general! It's also my first fic on AO3! I really hope you liked it seeing as I'm not very confident in the realm of fic yet. I know it's very vague and very flowery but I'm trying to ease my way into the world of publishing my fic on the internet, especially here, and especially these two.  
> Also, please note that I haven't read A Stitch In Time (yet) and so if Garak never, in fact, had a rooftop garden -- well, sue me. I like to imagine he did. He seems like the type who would have a rooftop garden, and that seems like a Cardassian sort of thing to have.


End file.
